Peaceful Farm Life
Chapter 212: Pounding Rice_1

Chapter 212: Chapter 212: Pounding Rice_1

"Husband, let’s build a house by our mountain land," An Jing suggested. "Later on, we can develop the surrounding area, plant some flowers and fruit trees. It can be our very own paradise."

"Hmm," Xiao Changyi hugged An Jing’s hand tighter.

"So should we start building the house first or make the furniture?"

"Grind rice first, we’re running low on rice at home."

Grinding rice, that is, the process of removing the husks from harvested grain, produces rice bran from the husks, and what’s left are the white rice kernels.

When An Jing heard Xiao Changyi say this, she remembered that they indeed didn’t have much rice at home, and grinding rice should be done first.

Last time, he bought fifty catties of polished rice, which had lasted them about a month. Moreover, during the busy farming days, in order to replenish their strength and ensure they had the energy to work, they ate meals with white rice, which only made the rice run out faster.

However, the tools for rice grinding here were really too primitive compared to modern rice milling machines.

Here, they used a stone mortar and pestle for rice grinding. The grain was placed in the stone mortar, and they would pound it with the pestle to knock off the bran.

It was somewhat like pounding medicine in a mortar.

It was also time-consuming and labor-intensive. One person couldn’t produce much rice in a day, no wonder the polished rice sold here was so expensive.

Her grandfather’s village was backward too, but at least they had a stone mill for grinding rice, much faster than using a stone mortar and pestle!

However, to get a stone mill, they would need to find a large piece of hard rock, and also polish it, which she and her husband probably couldn’t do. There didn’t seem to be any stonemasons in Sixteen Town either, so she temporarily gave up the idea of making a stone mill.

That’s right, there was an old grain rice dehusker in her grandfather’s granary, another tool for grinding rice. It was slower than a stone mill but obviously saved more time and effort compared to a mortar and pestle.

Back when there were no toys for her to play with in her grandfather’s house, she had disassembled that grain dehusker out of curiosity. After her grandfather discovered it, he reassembled it since he was attached to it. The dehusker had been with him for most of his life; despite being abandoned, he couldn’t bring himself to throw it away and kept it in the storehouse. When he reassembled it, she watched. Naturally, she couldn’t avoid listening to her grandfather reminiscing about how hard life had been during her great-grandfather’s time.

But crafting the grain rice dehusker would take some time because she didn’t quite remember some parts clearly anymore and would have to figure it out by trial and error. She estimated that the small amount of rice they had left would be gone before she figured out how to assemble the dehusker.

With that thought, An Jing then remembered the Stepping Dehusking Machine.

The Stepping Dehusking Machine was made of wood, with a long wooden base on one end having a concavity to hold the grains to be processed, and a long wooden arm on top with a hammer attached to one end. Upon stepping on the other end, the hammer would pound the grains, threshing them free of their husks.

This device was much simpler and easier to make.

Once she thought of this, An Jing’s eyes immediately lit up, "Husband, let’s make a Stepping Dehusking Machine. Using the stone mortar to grind rice is too slow and exhausting. The Stepping Dehusking Machine uses foot power and is a bit faster than the stone mortar, but most importantly, it’s much less strenuous. The grain rice dehusker is even faster than the Stepping Dehusking Machine, but it’s a bit more complicated—we can’t make that just yet. Once I’ve figured it out, we can build one. If there were a stonemason in town, we could actually make a stone mill powered by an ox, which wouldn’t require much effort from us at all."

Stepping Dehusking Machine? Grain rice dehusker? Stone mill?

Xiao Changyi didn’t understand any of it, but with previous experiences, he knew An Jing would definitely draw a diagram to show him what it looked like, so he didn’t ask further. Instead, he simply nodded and responded, "Hmm."